NextTrace is a visual route tracking CLI tool that pursues lightweight design and is developed using Golang.
The tool solves the problem of understanding network routing paths by providing an open source alternative to traditional traceroute utilities. It enriches routing information with ASN lookup, geolocation data, and AS-path analysis, presenting this data in a visual format. The tool operates in multiple modes including traditional traceroute, MTR (My Traceroute), and raw output variants, allowing users to choose their preferred display and analysis approach.
Developers should choose this tool if they need a lightweight, cross-platform route tracing utility with built-in geolocation and ASN enrichment. It suits network analysis, debugging, and infrastructure monitoring tasks where understanding the geographic and autonomous system path to a destination is valuable. The project maintains multiple command variants: nexttrace for the full-featured version, nexttrace-tiny for resource-constrained environments, and ntr for MTR-only operation. Installation is straightforward through official package repositories on Debian and Ubuntu systems, with support for numerous architectures including standard x86 and ARM variants as well as less common platforms.
The project maintains a clear separation between development and stable branches, with active development occurring in a dedicated repository while stable versions are synchronized to the core repository after a period of testing. The tool has established infrastructure sponsorship and receives community contributions through a structured pull request process. Code quality is actively monitored through automated linting and build verification workflows.
